Love Loves . . . Merton's Thoughts

Before posting my own reflection on, "What does it mean to love another?" as a follow-up to the previous post, "Love loves what is . . . as it is," I want to post some of Thomas Merton's words about love and charity.

These thoughts come from the first section of Merton's, No Man Is an Island. The chapter is called, "Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away." (I have retained Merton's original language, which uses masculine pronouns throughout. Merton was not only a product of his times, he was also the product of an all-male monastic community.)


There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be.

Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken.

***********

Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two. . . . Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. . . .

To love another is to will what is really good for him. Such love must be based on truth. A love that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred, rather than love. To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls. . . .

Charity is neither weak nor blind. It is essentially prudent, just, temperate, and strong. Unless all the other virtues blend together in charity, our love is not genuine. No one who really wants to love another will consent to love him falsely. If we are going to love others at all, we must make up our minds to love them well. Otherwise our love is a delusion. . . .

One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for him. . . . The truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, living in him.

************

In order to love others with perfect charity I must be true to them, to myself, and to God.

The true interests of a person are at once perfectly his own and common to the whole Kingdom of God. That is because these interests are all centered in God's designs for his soul. The destiny of each one of us is intended, by the Lord, to enter into the destiny of His entire Kingdom. . . .

If we love one another truly, our love will be graced with a clear-sighted prudence which sees and respects the designs of God upon each separate soul. Our love for one another must be rooted in a deep devotion to Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter into the invisible work that builds His Kingdom.

Love Loves What Is As It Is

Love loves what is as it is.

I have been saying this for years, mostly because it represents a life-stance to which I aspire, not a stance I have attained. Alas, I discover over and over again how far I have yet to travel in order to make this truth my very own.

I wish "Love loves what is as it is" was a comforting insight. Truly, it doesn't offer comfort to me as much as it disturbs me, challenges me, and presses me to a more God-centered stance toward people and situations.

Authentic love is not aligned with certain favorable conditions that are conducive to love and goodwill. Real love is not based on another person changing their ways, and thus becoming more lovable. Transforming love does not withhold itself in protest or make half-baked promises which are conditioned on certain outcomes.

Love loves what is . . . as it is. It does not wait for change. It does not demand the other become lovable -- though for the health of the other and the world, it may be in everyone's best interest for the other to become more lovable! -- before it loves.

Most days I lose touch with this Love early in the morning. I become angry at persons who use power to diminish others or who lord it over those who have no power. I withhold kindness to punish others for the wounds I perceive they have inflicted on me. I wait for wrongs to be righted as a kind of penance before I dare to invest my love and life in a person or situation.

I am frequently called back to Love, however. I am reminded often of my intention to live from an anchored Center, to approach the world from a core of mercy and compassion, rather than judgment and division. I am welcomed back to my foundational belief that those who live from this Center (what Jesus called "the kingdom of God") make a difference in the world simply by their presence.

A few months ago Deepak Chopra was on a late-night talk show. In the midst of talk about the healing power of meditation, the conversation turned to the anxiety, tension, and conflict in the world right now, and Chopra's belief that the turbulence is a sign of society going through a time of transition.

Then the host asked Chopra about inviting the President for a week of meditation, saying, "Do you think you could break him down?" Chopra responded, "You don't need to break him down. Go beyond his wounds to what is really troubling him. He needs love."

I could feel the jolt within myself . . . the air sucked out of my lungs. I was aghast! The loudest part of my being shouted, "Love a narcissist, a bully? Never!"

And the still, small voice within me said, "You KNOW it's true. You must love! This is the path you've chosen. Now walk in it."

The Kingdoms of This World

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’”

9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to protect you,’

11 and

‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

12 Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.



I most often read this temptation and testing story from the perspective of Matthew's Gospel. Recently, in moving through Luke's Gospel, I heard the story differently, with a nuance which had not caught my eye previously.

Specifically, I paid attention to vv. 5-8 more intentionally than simply giving the text a cursory reading. Perhaps I was influenced by the current state of affairs in the world. Whatever the reason, I felt a nudge to linger and consider those verses more deeply.

First, in the entire sequence Jesus is "led by the Holy Spirit" (4:1), which comes on the back-end of Jesus' baptism.

21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22)

At his baptism, Jesus' identity is confirmed. He hears down to his bones that he is the Son of God, he is pleasing to the Father, and his identity cannot be shaken nor severed. In a larger context, the three testings of Luke 4 are attempts to shake Jesus' understanding of himself, to cause him to doubt his core identity. And they come after a period of fasting alone in a wilderness where there are few external resources. In other words, at a time of weakness (H.A.L.T. = hungry, angry, lonely tired) Jesus was tempted to forsake his basic identity in God.

In the second wilderness test (4:5-8), the devil led Jesus up to where Jesus could see "in an instant" all the kingdoms of the world. By seeing in an instant, Jesus had a moment of illumination and enlightenment when he saw all the way through the kingdoms of the world. He saw how they operate, what makes them tick, how they do their business. In a moment of insight, Jesus sees into them, he sees how they work, and he sees what they are built upon.

Then Luke writes, as if to confirm what Jesus has seen in this enlightened vision, about the devil's offer to Jesus: "I will give you their power and authority, for they have all been given to me and I can give them to anyone as I please. Therefore, if you worship me, they will be yours." (This is the piece of the testing scene that I had previously overlooked.)

This is astounding . . . the kingdoms of the world, according to Luke's Gospel, have been given to the devil. They belong to this adversary, this one who stands opposed to God.

For whatever you think about the literal idea of "the devil," it is worth considering the words used in the New Testament for this being or spirit.

In Greek, satanas and satan are the words for accuser or adversary. The one called satan, then, is the one who operates by accusation, whose methodology is to accuse, accuse, accuse in an adversarial way. Pointing fingers, loudly accusing, belittling, sowing seeds of doubt, stoking the flames of fear . . . this is the work of the adversary.

In Greek, the word diabolos (from which we get "diabolical") is often translated "devil" and literally means "the one who divides or separates, the one who tears apart, the one who pits people against each other." Thus, the spirit of diabolos is to separate, to compete, to create conflict, to reduce everything in life down to winners versus losers.

So Luke 4:5-8 gives us a snapshot into how the kingdoms of this world operate, belonging as they do to the spirit of accusation and division (satanas). They accuse and belittle, they attack with barbs, they diminish the humanity of the other, they toss word-bombs from their places of power onto those who have little power.

And these kingdoms operate by dividing people out of fear (diabolos). They separate "us" from "them" They create conflict. They make enemies -- because creating enemies provides the energy of fear, which mobilizes people to act in self-protective ways.

Who are the contemporary "kingdoms of this world"? [This seems like picking low-hanging fruit, doesn't it?]

You can start with anyone or any group who has some kind of power in the world . . . whoever has built any kind of kingdom and then leans into accusation and division to solidity their power . . .

** big businesses who thrive on the competition and conflict inherent in a free-market economy . . . who create subtle and not-so-subtle trends that create a sense of "need" or "want" which competes with the needs and wants of others . . . the very notion of "haves" and "have-nots" is built on this conflict.

** politicians, for whom winning the next election no matter the cost nor the loss of integrity, is the sole objective. We hardly bat an eyelash anymore at politicians who, "Accuse! Accuse!! Accuse!!!" . . . who stoke fear . . . who belittle political opponents . . . who divide and create enemies . . . who separate persons based on religion, race, sexual orientation, nationality, political stance, and so on.

** government systems certainly are kingdoms of the world, only marginally built around compassion and mercy, and increasingly self-serving.

** religious institutions often look more like "kingdoms of the world" than the "kingdom of God" . . . fraught with competition, fomenting conflict, acting in self-interest, fearful of losing power, authority, or control . . . becoming places of judgment and exclusion rather than love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. (And this is not a recent trend, but rather, is a centuries-old hardening.)

The list could go on. The point is that if you are going to be a "successful" kingdom of this world, then you have to play by the rules and according to the spirit of the one to whom these kingdoms belong.

And this is the catch for Jesus. Jesus realizes, in his "instant" of insight, that if he is given the kingdoms of this world, he must also agree to manage or control the kingdoms by the methodology of the one giving them. To bow down and worship the devil means to take on the devil's means for operating the kingdoms of this world . . . the way of accusation and conflict, the way of division and enemy-creating.

To have the kingdoms of the world, you have to play by the rules of the accuser and the divider . . . you have to play by the rules of the kingdoms of the world . . . you have to hold power as they hold power . . . you have to deal with people as pawns the way they do . . . you have to think of soldiers as expendable commodities in order to further your purposes . . . you have to win -- or at least strive for winning -- so there is competition and fighting, wars and killing . . . you have to manipulate people to do your bidding, so you speak to the basic fears and insecurities of people, encouraging ill-will toward others . . . you demonize those whose way of life or life-orientation is different from yours.

And Jesus refuses! This is a trade he will not make! He is grounded in God. His long season of fasting in the wilderness has not weakened his connection with God, but rather has confirmed it. His resolve is stronger than ever . . . he is rooted in his identity in God, which is not founded on fear and insecurity, power and control, accusation and division. He will not accomplish his life-work using the methodology of the devil, or the kingdoms of the world.

He will not accuse; rather, he will love and he will forgive, even those who kill him for his subversive approach to life.

He will not divide and separate; rather, his life is about mercy, about union (with God, self, others, the world), about reconciliation (with God and others), and about making one that which the world has torn apart.

Stepping across the Divide

Luke 19:1-10

Jesus was going through Jericho, 2 where a man named Zacchaeus lived. He was in charge of collecting taxes and was very rich. 3-4 Jesus was heading his way, and Zacchaeus wanted to see what he was like. But Zacchaeus was a short man and could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree.

5 When Jesus got there, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down! I want to stay with you today.” 6 Zacchaeus hurried down and gladly welcomed Jesus.

7 Everyone who saw this started grumbling, “This man Zacchaeus is a sinner! And Jesus is going home to eat with him.”

8 Later that day Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “I will give half of my property to the poor. And I will now pay back four times as much to everyone I have ever cheated.”

9 Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today you and your family have been saved, because you are a true son of Abraham. 10 The Son of Man came to look for and to save people who are lost.”



In the previous post, I wrote about the expectations John the Baptizer had of Jesus . . . that Jesus would replicate John's motivational methodology of fear and shame, while further dividing and separating people (the good from the bad). Jesus, the Messiah John anticipated, rejected those means of calling people to deeper life in God. Instead, Jesus' methodology was grounded in his own identity in God. By living in mercy, compassion, love, and reconciliation, he continually sought to uncover the core identity of others as sons and daughters of God.

The Gospel reading for today strikes me as an example of how Jesus refused the divisions commonly enforced by others, and instead offered compassionate generosity to persons, no matter who they were.

Zacchaeus was a wealthy man, even if his wealth came at the expense of others.

Even though rich, he was categorized as a "sinner" by virtue of his occupation. He was also a "sinner" by virtue of his relationship with the Roman Empire. He was in the employ of a foreign government, yet he got wealthy from collecting taxes from "his own people" (do you see the insider-outsider language which separates?). As a tax-collector, he served the occupying government, but his livelihood came at the expense of his home tribe.

To the Romans he was a lackey. To his own people he was a traitor.

In terms of the religious culture of the day, Zacchaeus was a "sinner." The word denotes a social class of people who engaged in work deemed corrupt or disreputable by the religious hierarchy. The category of "sinner" was used by conventional religion to indicate who was in and who was out, thus dividing or separating in order to keep "good" people at a distance from corrupt or unholy people.

Zacchaeus belonged to this social class of people designated by cultural standards to be corrupt or unclean.

Today, this same kind of divide is made wider by religious entities, denominations, and church leaders . . . by governments, policies, and partisan politicians . . . by corporations and marketing campaigns. Some people are in and some are out. Some are justified in their "righteousness" and others are deemed "godless."

Jesus continually crosses this line, walking back and forth across the divide, meeting people from both sides where they are. His mercy and efforts at reconciliation anger those who want to maintain separation, those who are invested in the divisions, those whose worldview depends on competition and creating real or imagined "enemies." After all, making those who have a different worldview your enemy always provides a reason to get up in the morning, always gives energy for a fight, always gives you someone to oppose, always offers you someone at whom to aim your vitriol.

Jesus' anger is never directed at those "on the other side" of the divide, those who have been excluded. If anything, his harshest words are aimed at those who try to maintain the divide, those who keep people separated -- from others and from God -- by categorizing and demonizing.

Zacchaeus is not a "tax-collector" . . . that's only what he does for a living.

Zacchaeus is not a "sinner" . . . that's what religion has labeled him for his lifestyle and his associations.

Jesus sees Zacchaeus as a son of God who has been broken by life, who may have made some questionable choices, who may have done some harmful things, but who is not ultimately to be defined by anything other than his interior connection to God (a "son of Abraham").

So Jesus steps compassionately across the divide toward this alienated man to uncover his truest self, in an effort to help Zacchaeus find this sense of himself which he had lost.

Those who want to maintain the divide hurl accusation: "He's making friendly with a sinner!" But Jesus doesn't see Zacchaeus - or anyone -- as "sinner." He only sees children who have become lost and who need to find their way home. So he says to Zacchaeus, "Come down from the tree. I'm going home with you today!"

The way of Jesus has never been, "Love your neighbor and those like you . . . hate your enemy and those you don't like." (Matt. 5:43)

The way of Jesus has always been, "Love your enemies and those you oppose . . . and then pray for those who refuse your love." (Matt. 5:44)

In that way, Jesus stepped across the divide toward Zacchaeus. And in that same way he continues to step across the divide in our own day.

In a World of Separation and Shame, Bringing Mercy and Reconciliation

Luke 3:1-20

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

10 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19 But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added to them all by shutting up John in prison.



The Gospel of Luke records the entrance of John the Baptizer onto the scene as a forerunner to Jesus' public ministry (Luke 3:1-20). John's role is to prepare the people for "the One who is to come." John's aim is to bring moral change among his listeners, so that "paths would be straight, roads would be leveled, and rough ways be made smooth."

This road-work, so to speak, provides an entryway for the coming Messiah to enter the lives of the people (Lk. 3:3-6).

What are the paths, roads, and rough ways which needed to be given attention? They are within you and me, the ways we are crooked, too high or too low, and rough. We make ready the pathways within ourselves in order to make a way for the coming of the Messiah into our lives.

John knew that to receive something big, something that can change your life, you have to get ready. You have to make some space. You have to prepare yourself. For John, that space is created by moral change, by living a moral life.

John is right in some ways, you know. A growing, deepening spirituality does not drop upon us like pixie dust when we utter a few rehearsed words or respond to a religious salesperson's pitch. To give ourselves fully in living as God's people in the world, we have to make ourselves ready through practice and intention. We have to open ourselves to new ways of seeing and being in the world with God, self, others, and the world. We have to see ourselves honestly and ruthlessly name what we have seen of our interior.

But John's methodology for this preparation, for getting his listeners to moral living, is all guilt and fear. He calls the people who gathered around him, "a brood of vipers" (3:7) as if to shame the crowd into life-change. Then he warns of future punishments for those who don't get their acts together: "the ax is already laid at the root of the tree" (3:9).

He even says the Messiah will come to continue this work of division and separation (3:17), naming some good and worthy (the wheat), while others would be separated as bad and unworthy (the chaff).

Perhaps John leans too much into the Old Testament idea that to be holy means to be set apart from anything unclean or evil. Holiness separates you from that which is corrupt, the thinking went.

At any rate, John projects his own ascetic notions of morality onto the Messiah.

Moral living is a fine goal, but John seems to miss that persons almost never get to morality through shame and fear. Shame and fear act mostly as external motivators. They have no grounding center. They motivate through anxiety about some promised punishment . . . or through some imagined sense that I am a no-good human being. Both shame and fear may produce different behavior for a short-term, but almost never produce long-term, inner transformation. They simply do not have that power.

Jesus, the Messiah who was to come, refused to motivate by fear or shame. In fact, Jesus' path was just the opposite. He affirms in even the lowest of the low that they, too, are beloved sons and daughters of God. He encourages persons not to identify with their sinfulness, but to identify with the God-connection at the heart of who they are. Jesus continually invites persons to stop giving so much attention to the externals of religion, but to deal with the "inside of the cup."

Further, Jesus does not fulfill John's notion that the Messiah divides and separates. In fact, Jesus comes to do the opposite. He reconciles divisions, heals brokenness, mends separations, and brings back together that which has been torn apart. All of Jesus' life-work is about putting together people and relationships who have been broken apart.

The words that best describe Jesus are mercy . . . compassion . . . love . . . reconciling . . . liberating. He seems intent on bringing together, while rejecting separation and division both in the world and within the family of God's people.

John seems to have projected his own path onto Jesus. John made his understanding God's understanding, rather than making God's understanding his understanding.

It is a common mistake, a human mistake we all make, and sometimes find writ large in contemporary culture.

You don't have to look far to see how modern politics, religious life, and the entire social order are bent toward division and separation, pooling together the "alike" while shunning, ostracizing, and demonizing the "unlike." It happens in Christian denominations. It happens in political campaigns. It happens in government affairs at every level. We divide and separate, making enemies of those with other views, all while trying to rally support for our perspective.

This, my friends, is not the way of Jesus. And it is not the way those who truly want to follow Jesus.

Jesus does not endorse John's methodology of guilt and shame. He does not endorse life-change through fear of punishment or anxiety about the future. And he has no intention of separating or dividing, splitting nations, races, religious factions, and groups into the haves and the have-nots.

To broken humans who have been torn up by the world, Jesus brings mercy and compassion, helping all persons come back to a sense of who they are in God.

John got this fundamentally wrong about Jesus. Such basic, foundational spiritual work never happens by guilt and shame . . . nor by division and separation.

This work happens through love . . . mercy . . . compassion . . . reconciliation. And this is how Jesus still goes about his work in our world . . . denominational power plays, political rhetoric, and social divisions notwithstanding.

A Check on Your Opinions

The world contains a huge amount of anxious, angry energy at present. Maybe it always has done so . . . this anxious and destructive energy likely has always existed just beneath the surface. But somehow it feels more toxic now that it had made a home in plain sight.

Colliding worldviews and divisions give us pause even to engage in conversations that once would have been considered normal and everyday. [Am I the only one with an wary eye on Thanksgiving week and the family gatherings that include emboldened, combative voices from across ideological spectrums?]

As one of my favorite sports talk-show hosts used to say, "Opinions are like noses: Everybody has one." Indeed, everybody has an opinion.

But not all opinions are created equal, and simply holding an opinion strongly or loudly or stubbornly does not make that opinion life-giving or healthy or whole-making.

In fact, maybe we would do well to hold up those phrases to the ideologies or worldviews to which we cling:

** Is it life-giving? Is it life-giving for you? Is it life-giving for others? Does it lead to fullness of life for everyone concerned? Or does it diminish life?

** Is it healthy? That is, does it come from a place of healing and reconciliation? Does it lead to health (spiritual, emotional, physical) in you and others?

** Does it make the world whole? Does it help persons become complete? Does it help you and others live in the world as people who follow in the steps of Jesus? Is it something Jesus would support or advocate for? Does it hold together divisions? Or does it create more splits and deepen chasms?

I fully realize that not everyone will want to ask questions like these of themselves. But I also realize that for those who call themselves followers of Jesus, these are basic, fundamental stances for Christian disciples.

Spiritual Life and the Social Order

The inward spiritual journey always impacts life in the outer world.

A deepening connection with God (the inner work) always makes a difference in who we are with (and how we see) God, self, others, and the world (the outer work).

The spiritual dimension of life should always impact the social order in which we live.

In fact, the spiritual life gives you and me a different way of being in the world, a way of swimming upstream against the prevailing current of the social order, without having to adopt the means by which society plays the game.

To “play the game” by the rules of society is merely a way of granting legitimacy to those rules and to the social order that created them.

“The ‘team’ with the most votes wins . . . or the side that has the strongest argument is right . . . or this election is a referendum on _________.”

The social order acts – and throughout history, always has – as if it holds all the cards, as if it is the most powerful order in the world. The prevailing social “wisdom” assumes that because it creates the rules, passes the legislation, and determines what is important and unimportant, that it must be the most powerful aspect of life, whether that social wisdom represents “the Left” or “the Right”.

On the other hand, those given to the spiritual world and the spiritual realm of life bet their lives that there is a Spiritual Presence that undergirds all of life, a Divine Source present always and everywhere to which the prevailing social order is largely oblivious. Further, underlying the spiritual life is the conviction that the real authority and power in life is this Spiritual Presence, that all social claims to power and authority are mere pretenders.

So I’m pondering what it means to be a contemplative presence in the kind of world in which we live (and in which we have always lived). What is my life about as I seek to live in the world from the Center, tethered to the Source of all things?

I recognize that for centuries, when the Church was complicit in society’s corruption, those who carried forward the way of Jesus had to do so underground, in ways and in places that were quiet, unseen, and out of the mainstream. In fact, in those centuries, the mainstream expressions of religious faith were just as corrupt as society at large, filled more with the messages of the social order than with the Gospel. So it was up to mystics, monks, and holy women to carry – and live into – a way of being in the world that was healing and regenerative, rather than divisive, hostile, and hysteric.

In the Middle Ages, Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops were a part of royal courts, in the service of monarchs, and a part of the corruption that comes with power. In those settings, the religious authorities offered widespread blessing of the very corruption that served some well, but oppressed most. In those days, it was up to mystics to speak of an authentic connection with God that ran deeper than political influence. Monasteries became places where simplicity and poverty of spirit symbolized a stance against the power structures of the day. But that kind of resistance flowed mostly underground.

In the 1930’s, the Church in Germany so totally adopted the platform of the Nazis that Christians could no longer see what was real. Persons who carried forward an authentically Gospel message – like Dietrich Bonhoeffer – had to do so through an underground Church, so totally had the mainstream Church and clergy adopted the prevailing social order.

So today, the calling of those who would be awake, who would seek a deepening connection with God that makes a difference in the world, may take an underground, almost subversive form. That is not to say contemplatives or those who lean into the spiritual dimension of life should not be active in the social order, in political systems, government, business, and so on. Always, part of the Divine invitation is to work and pray for a more just, more merciful and compassionate world (“on earth as it is in heaven”). So we do not “sit this one out.” However, we also acknowledge that trusting in elections, legislation, capitalism, and policies to change hearts is misplaced trust.

Your spiritual journey makes a difference in the world.

Your practice of prayer impacts the circumference of your realm of influence.

Your openness to a deepening connection with God creates healing space within you and around you that touches the world with wholeness and generosity.

Your soul’s tether to the Source of Life is stronger and more real than all the power, control, and legislations of the social order.

And in your intention to live from a life-giving Center, you carry on an underground tradition that no power of the world can curb.

Crossroads Voices: Giving Thanks at All Saints and All Souls

GOD’s Message yet again:

“Go stand at the crossroads and look around.
Ask for directions to the old road,
The tried-and-true road. Then take it.
Discover the right route for your souls.
But they said, ‘Nothing doing.
We aren’t going that way.’”

(Jeremiah 6:16, The Message)


At times, I stand at a crossroads and look around for direction on the path to take onward . . . and hear nothing, see nothing.

At other times, I stand at the crossroads and look around for wisdom . . . and what I hear or see or sense seems too difficult, too unreasonable. I’m not yet ready to go in the way I’m being led.

And at other times, I stand at the crossroads, noticing the several ways that branch out from that intersection, and I find myself ready to hear and follow the wisdom that I sense in that moment. Very often for me, that wisdom comes in the form of a person, a voice, another life who shows up at just the moment I’m needing wisdom at the crossroads.

Sometimes the voice that shows up is someone speaking across the ages . . . the voice of someone in days past who has lived wisely and courageously shared their wisdom . . . in order to help guide other travelers . . . a poet like Rilke or an otherwise unsuspect woman who lived underneath the notice of her times like Mother Julian.

I am aware of how indebted I am to these other voices, these other lives. I stand on the shoulders of so many others, as do you. There is no such thing as a “self-made man” or a “self-made woman.” All of us are products of those who have guided us when we were seeking direction at the crossroads, open to wisdom that has guided others before us in ways that are healing and life-giving, in ways that enable us to live with fullness of soul.

Yesterday was the Feast of All Saints and today is the Feast of All Souls. These days on the calendar give opportunity to pause and remember those who have gone before us, those who have shared their wisdom when we were at crossroads, lost and searching. I have given more time than usual this year to reflecting on the importance of these two days because of three deaths last week of persons who shared their wisdom with me in different ways, yet all when I was at various crossroads.

Eugene Peterson died last week. In a story I’ve told often, I first encountered Peterson through a friend who sent me a copy of Working the Angles in the early 1990’s. I had recently completed four years of rigorous doctoral work that had occupied every spare moment that didn’t include family or church responsibilities. I was in a dry spot, facing my own internal emptiness. I didn’t know I was standing at a crossroads looking for wisdom, but in hindsight I very clear was doing just that. As I read Peterson’s words in Working the Angles, I knew he was talking right to my heart and soul. The moment was pivotal and the course I took in reading his words had huge repercussions on everything that has unfolded in my life in the 25 years since.

Peterson gave me a language for my soul’s yearning, and some basic practices that began to feed my soul. I quickly bought as many of his books as I could find. In the summer of 1995 I took a sabbatical for study and refreshment. I took several weeks to study under Peterson at Regent College in Vancouver. The time was transforming, feasting on Peterson’s talks in the mornings, then spending the rest of the long British Columbia days exploring mountains, hiking in forests, discovering waterfalls, dipping my feet into glacial lakes. I ended up going back to Vancouver for his classes four or five times.

In recent years, I have found myself pushing back more and more on some of his assumptions, but isn’t that the way it is with our mentors? He and I grew in different ways, ways unique to each of us. Even so, I have never stopped being grateful for how he gave me an early language for what was happening in my soul.

Kyrie eleison.

Fr Thomas Keating died last week. I don’t remember my first encounter with Fr Keating. I practiced Centering Prayer – thanks to another saint, Sr Adeline O’Donoghue – before I knew who Keating was. Sr Adeline probably introduced me to him, as well, in the mid-1990’s. At any rate, the first book by Keating I read was not his introduction to Centering Prayer, Open Mind, Open Heart, but his book which explained the interior workings of contemplative prayer, Invitation to Love. Keating had a deep, experiential grasp of contemplative prayer and how it operates in a person’s soul. He was smart and knew a lot of psychology, but most of what he shared was borne of personal experience. He did not simply repeat someone else’s theory.

I ended up meeting Keating a handful of times and hearing him speak in person. He was a large man, commanding a room in his white monk’s habit, but gentle and funny. And in either conversation or teaching, his words always seemed to arise from a deep place within him. There was weight in his speech, gravitas, something that seemed to come from a deep interior well. He knew who he was and was comfortable with who he was, so he was not demonstrative or persuasive or motivational. He did not need to be someone other than the person he was. My time with him helped shape my own notion of what it means to be wise . . . that wisdom comes from spiritual reflection and integrating life experiences, from considering life deeply.

I grieve that the world will be without Fr Keating’s physical presence. But I celebrate that wisely, Keating and others years ago formed Contemplative Outreach as a structure that would carry on the work of contemplative prayer and serve as a vehicle for transformation through this unassuming prayer practice.

Christe eleison.

Robert Winn died last week. In my home church in Tulsa, I served on the staff for four years during college and for a year after college before leaving for seminary . . . and I served alongside Robert. I was fairly new to the “Christian-thing” and brand new to the “church staff thing.” Robert was the older, wiser presence – in my late teens, I thought he was an old man . . . turns out Robert was only 14 years older than I am, so he was in his early 30’s . . . still, he was an “old man” to me as a teenager.

Robert was the one person on that staff I could go to for advice and wisdom, the person whose door was always open to me. Any other staff person, I would have needed an appointment to see. I could seek him out with questions about how to do things, how to approach certain aspects of ministry. He was funny, relaxed, and the afternoons we spent in ping-pong battles in the church’s game room produced some epic matches. He was a friend and an early mentor. For many years, I carried with me Robert’s notions about what it means to serve well on a church staff. As much as anyone, especially early in ministry, he taught me about survival in a local church.

Kyrie eleison.

Who have been your “crossroads” voices?

For whom do you give thanks at All Saints and All Souls?

Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison

Expanding the Walls

Every human draws circles around himself or herself in order to determine how large his/her world will be.

Most of us prefer to live in a world made up of people who look like us, think like us, believe like us, and talk like us. So we wall in those who are "like us" and we wall out those who are unlike us. "Good fences make good neighbors," says the man on the other side of Robert Frost's wall (the previous blog post).

You don't have to look far in contemporary culture to know this truth. In fact, you likely see it in the world before you notice it in yourself. Examples abound, and are easy enough to see . . . men or women are all stereotyped because of the actions of a few . . . entire ethnic groups are stigmatized because of the behavior of a small portion of that population . . . all persons within any identity sub-set of life are all characterized in the same way.

I tend to "profile" all persons who drive a particular brand of automobile (these persons also tend to drive the same color of that make and model!) as "entitled" and "arrogant" . . . even as they cut me off and speed on down the freeway.

Most all of us do this kind of thing in one way or another, creating insiders and outsiders . . . whether we label those outside our circle as "liberal elites" or as "a basket of deplorables." We have one set of labels for those inside the circle with us, and another set of labels -- usually much more pejorative -- for those outside the circle.

Jesus spent little time cozying up to those who would have been inside his wall or circle . . . those who looked like him, talked like him, or shared a common background. Using the vocabulary I've suggested, Jesus was mostly focused on those on the outside of culture's norms, not those inside. As I've said before in this space, while Jesus gave most of his attention to those who were on the outside of society's wall, it is doubtful Jesus ever met anyone who he considered to be an outsider. He was spacious enough, generous enough, that he had no walls, no need to create divisions.

That kind of spaciousness and generosity -- perhaps we could call it "mercy" or "compassion" -- is fundamental to the nature of God.

Expanding your walls -- or eventually letting them crumble -- is not as easy as just wishing it so. It takes an ongoing, daily intention to see the actual truth of our lives . . . to be deliberate in our self-reflection . . . to be honest with ourselves about who we are and how we are in the world. We have to be willing to see ourselves as we are, not merely as we wish to be . . . to acknowledge the truth about the walls we live within (who is included, who is excluded) . . . and to take small steps which make wider the circles in which we live.

Engage someone who is "outside" your circle in conversation, not intending to change their mind, but simply to listen to them.

Be in settings made up of people who are not "like you" (whatever you take "not like you" to mean). Be there as an observer, as a compassionate presence.

Seek to understand as honestly as possible how someone who sees life differently could be the way they are. For example, try to see life from the perspective of that family member whose politics are 180 degrees different from yours. Or try to imagine life from the perspective of that neighbor who is from a different culture, a different part of the world. Your perspective, after all, is NOT the only perspective.

Small steps . . .

I do know this . . . it takes a lot of energy to go about this more expansive inner work. It is not easy.

But as Frost's poem, "Mending Wall" suggests (in the previous post), it also takes a lot of work to keep mending the same old walls, leaving them right where they have always been.

Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Wall

As you can see from my post last week, I'm considering the size and shape of our personal world, and the many ways we draw circles around ourselves to create a world that is as large or small as we can stand to live in. In that spirit, I offer you this well-known poem by Robert Frost, "Mending Wall."

I'll not comment on the poem . . . but would love to commend it to you for your consideration and meditation. I'll provide some suggestions for reflection at the bottom of the post that might prompt you to work with Frost's poem a bit. To hear the poem, read it two or three times through, perhaps once or twice out loud. If you print the poem, highlight the lines that stand out for you, or the phrases that intrigue you. Jot down your own questions about the poem.


Mending Wall
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."


** What might be the "something" that doesn't love a wall . . . the "something ... that wants it down"? I have a couple of ideas for myself. What do you think?


** "And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go."

These three lines seem to be a statement that mocks civility, as if the work of keeping the wall in place -- and between the men -- was the most normal work in the world. How do you understand these lines, especially in light of the "something" that doesn't love a wall?


** There are several places where the poem implies, "This is how it has always been, and this is the way it will be into the days ahead." Note the passages which suggest a clinging to the past. How do you react to them?


**Hold these two lines in your hands -- perhaps one in each hand -- and consider them together. Then, see where you come down.
"Good fences make good neighbours."

"Why do good fences make good neighbours?"


**Frost writes,
"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence."

Think of walls you have encountered . . . either literal walls that separated you from others and impeded your travel . . . or metaphorical walls that have kept you apart or separated from a job, a vocation, a relationship, etc. As you consider specific encounters with a wall, what was walled out? What was walled in? (Walls always function both to wall out and to wall in, though that is seldom acknowledged.)


** What would you say to Robert Frost about his poem? Do you have questions to ask him? What would you like to know that you can't readily assume from the actual poem?

Slow-Growing into God

Growth always comes with a cost. I'm not talking about growth as the day-in, day-out growing older that is part of being human. I'm talking about spiritual growth, emotional health, the ongoing development of the inner person.

Growth in any aspect of life always means leaving the previous season of life and stretching into something new and unknown. Maybe for that reason, a great many of us often feel stuck where we are. On the one hand, we grow comfortable and have a sense of ease and familiarity with where we are, even if that place is not particularly pleasant. Pleasant is good, and we much prefer the smooth ride to the bumpy, unpredictable journey.

Most of us, though, have to be jettisoned out of that kind of comfort in order to grow, in order to move toward the completeness for which we were created. Thrown into uncertainty or hardship, we are forced to find within ourselves the resources that have lain dormant within us, as well as calling on resources outside ourselves that we have not accessed previously. For most of us, difficulty provides a sharp-edged catalyst for growth that most of us would not undertake otherwise.

I've noticed that most all of us, no matter who we are and where we are in life, tend to think that we are fully formed right where we are in the current moment . . . that if we just tweak a few things and make some minor adjustments, we'll be the full expression of "me." Such is our conceit. Such is our illusion.

Most every discovery we make in our own growth or becoming feels like the one, missing puzzle piece. Each step we make feels like the final step over into the promised land, the final move into our long-sought-after destiny. I've met few people in life who did not think that where they were at that given moment was not their final landing place . . . which is why I've called it our "conceit" and "illusion." Every awakening feels like the ultimate awakening . . . but it is not.

In the Gospels, Jesus consistently invites us to grow up. He returns to it as a core message. Jesus does not have judgment for those who are stuck in particular places of development in the spiritual life. He knows that we can only get to the next place in life from where we are, so he doesn't belittle a person for being where they are.

He does, however, have harsh words for those who are stuck in life, but who pretend they are more advanced than anyone else. Note here that the harshest words of Jesus in the Gospels are aimed at those who, by outward appearance, are religious and flaunt their supposed "righteousness" for others to see. He has no condemnation for those who are "sinners" and who know they are "sinners" . . . only for those who pretend, by their religiosity, to be other than "sinners."

In a sense, those who are most openly religious in the Gospels don't feel the need to "grow up" or to make any kind of spiritual journey. They have arrived. They are completely all they need to be. They have all the answers, they've settled all the issues, they've worked out all the theology. Hence, they love to be seen by others as holy, applauded by the masses as righteous, honored by outsiders as having special access to the Holy.

Wisely, St. Benedict of Nursia said, "Do not wish to be called holy before you are."

But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says all of the above is merely early-stage religion. Not that it is unimportant -- Jesus is careful not to abolish anything in the Law (Matt. 5:17) -- but Jesus takes it in a different direction (Matt. 5:17-44). While some might have anticipated that Jesus would rachet up the Law to a more rigorous degree, instead he takes the Law inward. He begins with the Law as a kind of Religion 101, as a place to begin basic life with God in the world. "Do this" and "Don't do that." "Here's how you need to behave," the Law says in countless codes of behavior. It is important early stage religion.

Jesus, though, doesn't not notch up the Law a degree or two. Rather, he says, go inward. You've been concerned about behavior, about morality. Now go to the source of that behavior. Go to the root of morality. Because Jesus knew that any religious system that merely offered regulations for moderating behavior could not produce lasting life-change or transformation. In Jesus' estimation, the Law regulated behavior but did almost nothing to touch the interior of a person.

So he said things like, "You have heard it said, 'Don't kill.' I'm saying to you, don't be angry and don't hate." Jesus went, not just to the behavior itself, but to the inner source of the behavior. He said the same kind of thing not just about killing, but about adultery and taking oaths.

In other words, Jesus affirms and acknowledges the importance of a religious system that advocates for civil behavior; however, he does not wish us to remain at that place forever. He builds on that stage of development. He invites us to grow, to develop, to resist being locked into a particular way of being that becomes so settled we can never move from it.

We all need Religion 101, the basic initiation into religious life. And some of us need that training longer than others. We need to be fully grounded in explicit instructions that govern our behavior in order to function as God's people in the world. But Jesus is warning against the trap of thinking Religion 101 is the fullness or extent of religious devotion. It is not. There is more.

There is always more beyond where you are . . . wherever you are. The more beyond does not negate nor diminish where you are currently. You have to be where you are in order to get to where you are going . . . just don't take any place in life as the final destination. There is always more, always something larger still in front of you. Don't build a house where you are and settle there for a lifetime. Keep traveling. Keep growing. Keep becoming. No place is the final place.

How do I know where I am? Consider where you were 5 years ago . . . or 3 years ago . . . or 1 year ago. Are you the same person now? Do you have the same beliefs? the same practices? the same image of God, yourself, and other persons or groups? If yes, then you may have built a house where you are.

In the spiritual life we are always moving into a larger world, a more expansive vision, an increasing grace. At any given time, we are living into only a small part of who God is. We never live into all of God all at once.

We slowly live more deeply into God; that is the nature of God. What we see, experience, and apprehend at any juncture is incomplete, only a part of the whole. So we keep moving, keep traveling, keep becoming. This is the nature of our life's journey, our life in God.

The Way In: A Rilke Poem

The Way In
Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever you are: some evening take a step
out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are.
Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves
from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes
slowly, slowly, lift one black tree
up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.
With that you have made the world. The world is immense
and like a word that is still growing in the silence.
In the same moment that your will grasps it,
your eyes, feeling its subtlety, will leave it. . . .

[Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly, p. 71.]


I have lived with this Rilke poem for the better part of a year now. It first appeared on my radar as I considered a change of work and a move to another state. Last week I read it to a group on retreat at a Benedictine monastery. It seemed to have as much resonance with persons in that body as it has had with me.

Initially, the overlay on my life was obvious. I held a job I loved for 18 years, among a people I dearly loved. As such, I lived in a comfortable "house" for all those years, a house that was cozy and somewhat predictable, with regular rhythms and a consistent way for me to exercise my gifts. I was free to explore as needed, to occasionally move beyond the fences which would predictably arise. I found myself most fully "at home" in that house.

To step out of my "house" meant distance from friends and life-companions who were my extended family . . . distance from practices that had grown to be second-nature . . . and distance from financial security as I enter the late afternoon and evening of life.

Yet, as Rilke described the house, I knew it "so well." As familiar and cozy as it was, once the door cracked open and the light from outside the house rushed through the door-ajar, I had to step through . . . for reasons I did not fully understand then, and which I still cannot adequately verbalize.

I had other, previous experiences leaving "a house I knew so well," but in those experiences I was suffocating inside the house. In order to live and offer my life in service to the world, I had to step out of those houses. Last year, though, I was not pushed out the door, nor stepping away with a sense of desperate survival. I could have rocked along, business as usual, for a good, long while.

Nonetheless, it was time to "step outside the house." In a sense, this time as at other times, I had to do it. The invitation to step outside the house, as Rilke says, is the opening into the "enormous space" nearby . . . into the wild immensity of the world.

I'm no hero, villain, or saint for stepping out of that particular house. People make life-altering decisions all the time, sometimes out of courage, sometimes out of desperation, and sometimes just to survive. And truth be told, there are still plenty of houses I live in which I've yet to step out of.

A house is a structure, a confinement, a place of dwelling. It roots us, in the sense of limiting our movement, travel, or journey. Even on an intentional journey, a spiritual journey, humans seem to want to build dwelling places in which to settle. Maybe we do that out of our fear or for the sake of security. Whatever the reason, we seem to be very good at building and living confined within houses.

If "journey" is metaphor for moving onward in life, then "house" is metaphor for staying put where we are. Rilke simply says, "step out of your house some evening, the house that is so familiar to you."

Growth, especially spiritual becoming, does not consist in making sure everything is comfortable and well-ordered, safe and secure within the confines of my current "house," but rather, stretches, reaches, explores. Spiritual becoming means always expanding, including, opening. Authentic growth never keeps us confined, never makes us smaller, but always thrusts us into the world as redeeming, reconciling presences.

But taking a step out of our houses is no simple act. Many of our houses are well-constructed and have served us well for a lifetime.

The houses in which we dwell differ for each of us.
There is the house of what you believe.
Or the house of what you hold dear.
Or the house of what you belong to.
Or the house of your deepest loyalties.
Or the house of your politics.
Or the house of your ideology.
Or the house of your religious tradition.
Or the house of your roles.
Or the house of the way your parents raised you.
Or the house of what is required at your work.
Or the house of that toxic relationship.
Or the house of your identity group (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.).

Most of us live in many houses, and we stay in them because they are so familiar to us . . . we "know them so well." We may even say things like, "This is just who I am."

When Rilke says, "Take a step out of your house," he is not suggesting we should forsake the house, burn it down, or turn our backs on it. (Of course, there is a time to make a complete break from the house we know so well . . . but not in all cases.)

He simply says, "Step outside."
"Enormous space is near."
"The world is immense."

This is poetic wisdom: Just a simple step outside our role, our belief, or our must/should/oughts is a step into the world, into the vastness for which we were created. Most often, it is the first step that is most crucial, because without the first step there can be no successive steps. Take the first step, he says.

Last week on retreat, my friend David heard this poem for the first time. He pointed out something about the poem I had overlooked completely in months of pondering it. He noted the poem's title . . . while the main action of the poem is taking a step "out of your house," the poem is showing us "the way in."

This is how it goes. The way in, the way of living soul-fully, the way into a deepening life of significance, the way of accessing your own interior riches . . . all are accessed by taking a step out of the house you know so well!

"Who Are You?": It's Not as Simple as You Might Think

If I asked, "Who are you?", how would you respond? I imagine some answer might come immediately to your mind . . . but then you might end up walking back that initial response as you consider the question more deeply. I find myself circling around the question quite often . . . reflecting on it from different angles, coming at it from different directions.

Am I a role or a function? Am I what I do for a paycheck? Am I my vocation . . . in the larger sense of how I speak (vocare) into the world? Am I this or am I that?

What does it mean to be me in the world? What does it mean to be me in connection with God . . . others . . . the world?

While the exercise might seem self-serving, it really is the most fundamental kind of conversation we can enter into. And where we land with the question will speak volumes about how we see ourselves in connection with God, self, others, and the world. It will determine how we are in the world and then work its way into what we do in the world.

To my mind, the question concerns our essence, our being, rather than what we do or how we function. "Who am I?" does not invite a litany of positions I hold, tasks I perform, or a spreadsheet that details how I spend the hours of my day. The "being" -- or "essence" -- question gets to the core of my very self.

I have several reasons for raising these issues today. Among them, I've reflected quite a lot lately on Jesus, at 30 years old, going to the Jordan River to be dunked in the water by John the Baptizer. ("Dunked" is what the Greek word for baptism literally means.) The event signals the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, the short 3 year span in which he would proclaim a new way of being in the world (he called this new life-stance or framework for living the "kingdom of heaven" or "kingdom of God") through his ministry of making people whole through story-telling, acts of mercy, and invitations to live God-centric lives.

At this Jordan River moment, though, something happens that wasn't on anyone's radar. As he comes up out of the baptismal waters, the Heavenly Voice says, "This is my son, my beloved one, and I am well-pleased with him." It is an astonishing, pivotal moment. For Jesus, it establishes who he is right here at the beginning of his public ministry, a ministry that would be fraught with conflict and charges. The Voice speaks now, before Jesus performs a single miracle, before he does anything at all which would tempt him to believe he is God's beloved Son merely because he does good things, performs miracles, or heals the sick. God said, "You are pleasing to me" before Jesus did a single thing in public ministry.

In other words, Jesus did not earn this affirmation of his identity in God. It was not bestowed upon him because he was worthy of it. It was simply a statement of what is, apart from what he did or would do.

I know many people who, if asked, "Who are you?" would respond, "I am a beloved daughter of God" or "I am a son of God, loved all the way through." Many of those same people, though, know that truth only at the level of their mind and their lips. They may be able to believe the affirmation in some ways, and speak to it when asked, but then act as if who they are is totally dependent on what they do, how they perform, or how well they fulfill their function.

Truly, one of the most difficult things in life is to hear the Voice who speaks to each one of us, speaking into the deep, inner recesses of our lives, telling us about our identity as the beloved of God. It seems as if we can't quite believe who we are, given what we know of our own darkness and shadows, given all the dirt we have on our own selves. It seems we cannot believe we could be loved so thoroughly, so without merit.

In fact, most of us doubt the reality of our belovedness until we hear the words deep in our core, in our most inward heart. (I do believe that our souls know the truth of our identity . . . but other voices so drown out the quiet nudges of the soul that we live mostly unconvinced until we finally, one day hear the words in our deepest hearts, words the soul has known all along.)

For many of us, it takes a life-time to hear fully this affirmation of who we are. We get glimpses of it in another human who seems to know too much about us, yet still is committed to us, despite the mess of our lives.

Or we sense a bit of it in the simple, loyal connection we have to a pet who wags a tail and is overjoyed to see us, regardless of whether we have done well or acted badly.

As Matt Linn once suggested on a retreat . . . if you think of the person or the animal who seems to love you most in this world, who seems to have the most positive regard for you no matter what your life looks like . . . if you can sense how much that person or animal loves you, you can be sure that God loves you at least that much!

A Case for God . . . Not the Experience of God

2 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4 And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

5 Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)

7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”

8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 They kept the matter to themselves, discussing what “rising from the dead” meant. (Mark 9:2 - 10)


The Transfiguration story is important at several levels. It is especially challenging to those who have given themselves to an intentional journey of deepening life in God. Within a narrative full of movement (Jesus took . . . led them . . . they were coming down . . . all indicating journey and action), Peter gets struck by how "good it is for us to be here" and his desire to erect shelters, tabernacles, or booths. His suggestion that they create a memorial marker speaks to the perpetual human tendency to freeze spiritual experience in time, to codify the experience in order to remember it and perhaps to have it again at some later time.

Did you have a meaningful spiritual experience at this particular retreat center? Then go to that place again, and see if you can replicate that experience.

Did you sense God speaking to you through this book or author 10 years ago? Then read the book again, or another by the same author, and God will repeat the vision.

Did you find a particular set of spiritual practices meaningful to you as an adolescent? Then return to those practices in order to have a similar spiritual experience.

Did something significant happen to you today? Take a picture, post it to Facebook, and set it to your social media timeline. Next year on this date you'll be reminded of what happened today.

Was a particular sermon or worship experience meaningful to you? Buy the cd of the sermon and service . . . you can replay it as you drive around town, and be reminded always of the way you felt God come close in that experience.

Of course, these methods are not all bad, and I'm not suggesting there is never a place for them. All of them, however, are attempts to recreate a particular experience of God. There are so many different ways to build shelters and set up monuments to spiritual experience, just as Peter suggested on the mountain.

The real danger in the spiritual life is that the experience itself becomes a commodity, sought in and for itself. Most humans are complete addicts in this way . . . when something feels good, especially when we feel we have tapped into the numinous in a significant way, we want more of it. We want to repeat the same experience of peace . . . we want to have the same sense of generosity again . . . we want to know ourselves loved deep-down, not just for a moment, but always.

Addiction to spiritual experience is especially seductive, and because it is "spiritual," we assume it must be good. If a little is good, then more must be better, right?

Hear Thomas Merton:

The one great danger that confronts every person who takes spiritual experience seriously, is the danger of illuminism or, in Monsignor Ronald Knox's term, "enthusiasm". Here the problem is that of taking one's subjective experience so seriously that it becomes more important than truth, more important than God. Once spiritual experience becomes objectified, it turns into an idol. It becomes a "thing", a "reality" which we serve. We are not created for the service of any "thing", but for the service of God alone, Who is not and cannot be a "thing". To serve Him Who is no "object" is freedom. To live for spiritual experience is slavery, and such slavery makes the contemplative life just as secular (though in a more subtle way) as the service of any other "thing", no matter how base: money, pleasure, success. Indeed, the ruin of many potential contemplatives has been this avidity for spiritual success. (The Inner Experience, ed. by Thomas Hart, p. 139.)

The language of "idolatry" hearkens back to the Ten Commandments, which begin with the command to have only one God. To be sure, to use the language of idolatry for something which is seemingly good, like spiritual experience, seems extreme. Yet, that is the very nature of idolatry. Even good things that are not God must not be worshiped.

Let me be clear. I'm for spiritual experience.
Worship may be a spiritual experience.
Retreats may provide an experience of God.
Spiritual practices may open us to spiritual experience.

But spiritual experience is at least one degree away from God. As Merton says, the goal of the spiritual life is not experience, but God . . . to know God in a direct, unmediated way.

For this reason, the Christian mystics have proposed silence and solitude as the most basic contexts for knowing God, rather than some setting in which emotions and excitability were the driving forces. In silence and solitude, there are no words to get in the way, nothing about silence and solitude that can truly be described or prescribed, no way for the experience to be manipulated in order to get a particular experience of God. There is only God in the naked silence.

Also, this is the reason many of the great monastic traditions -- going back to the Desert Abbas and Ammas of the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries -- gathered in places which seemed extreme, building monasteries in places that were not lush or aesthetically abundant. Deserts, rocky outcroppings, and frigid tundras have provided monastic settings which tend toward the extremes. They have been chosen most often because their fierceness lends itself to the rawness and immediacy of God, rather than to an excitable religious experience. (20 years ago, Belden Lane's book, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, was a testament to this fierceness.)

Again, please do not diminish spiritual experience. Most all of us are prodded forward by spiritual experience, even the experience of God. But the goal is not more experience. The goal of life is God.

Beyond Gathering Information

A poem to ponder today . . .

Information
David Ignatow

This tree has two million and seventy-five thousand leaves.
Perhaps I missed a leaf or two but I do feel triumphant
at having persisted in counting by hand branch by branch
and marked down on paper with pencil each total.
Adding them up was a pleasure I could understand;
I did something on my own that was not dependent on others,
and to count leaves is not less meaningful than to count the stars,
as astronomers are always doing.
They want the facts to be sure they have them all.
It would help them to know whether the world is finite.
I discovered one tree that is finite.
I must try counting the hairs on my head, and you too.
We could swap information.


I haven't read much poetry by David Ignatow, but I'm imagining his tongue planted firmly in cheek . . . as if knowing the number of leaves on a tree could tell all you needed to know about the tree . . . or as if counting the stars in the sky gave you all the information you needed about galaxies and solar systems . . . as if knowing how many hairs were on your head could exhaust the richness and complexity of being you.

Does having "facts" or the right information mean an object is finite, limited, able to be thoroughly understood or defined? Even in a culture where truth is reduced to "alternative facts" I think we know better than that.


**Take a look at a tree, a real tree, outside your window or from your porch. Better yet, go sit underneath a tree.
Then make your own list of what is important about that tree.
What makes it a tree?
What sustains it?
How would you describe that particular tree to someone who had never seen a tree before?
Or how would you describe that particular tree to someone who has seen thousands of trees before?
What makes this tree the unique tree it is?


**When the night-sky is clear, spend a few minutes sitting or lying underneath it.
Are you able to count what you see?
Notice what you see . . . what nuances make certain stars stand out more than others?
You don't have to imagine or conjure up something for the stars to mean . . . just enjoy watching what is.


**Consider your own life.
In what ways are you more than the hairs on your head?
What do you consider the most important information about yourself?
Are you willing to discover something else that would supplant that particular information as "most important" about yourself?
What do you most like about yourself?
What about yourself would you most like to change?
What truth abides at the core of you and shapes your daily life?
Think of a close friend. What would he/she say abides at your core and shapes your daily life?
How many hairs are on your head?

Spirituality as Subtraction, not Addition

Decades ago my wife and I knew a man who loved to tinker with woodwork, doing some minor carpentry around his house. At some point, he decided to build an extra room onto his house. With family members helping in the project, he added the room. But one room was not enough. Soon he decided he needed another . . . then another. I don't know how many rooms he added in all, but over the years his house took up nearly every foot of his city lot. This amateur carpenter never took anything down, only adding to his existing house until it ate up his entire property.

We were guests in his house a couple of times, and when he would give us the tour of the latest project, we would walk through a room to a doorway cut in the strangest place, spilling into a misshapen hallway that led to the next room, where the same pattern would be repeated. It was the only way he could get everything to fit together. I suppose in an emergency there was only one way in and one way out, because the home seemed like an endless chain of rooms and angled hallways that had to be navigated single-file. The entire layout was connected, to be sure, but was only loosely held together by the builder's latest whim. While I'm sure the layout made sense to him, to others nothing seemed to cohere.

Because we regularly passed the house in our coming and going, my wife began calling it the "Add-on Extravaganza." It became something of a game to drive by and see what the latest project was, the next "add-on" in the extravaganza.

His way of adding on to his house was far removed from a renovation or refurbishment, in which walls are taken down, the existing arrangement of the house is altered, and the old bones of a house are given new life. In a renovation, something has to be subtracted before something else can be added. If you want more space for a kitchen, you demolish a wall and open up space into a dining or living area. In the end, you most always have to get rid of something in order to make space for something else.

In our desire for a deepening connection with God, persons who engage an intentional spiritual path often thrill to find new prayer methods, retreat experiences, spiritual books, conferences, and classes that hold the promise of another step toward awakening. I know this temptation well. The appeal of a new book or a gifted teacher can be overwhelming. It is quite easy for any of us to begin to add this teaching to that experience . . . to add this prayer practice to my bagful of spiritual disciplines . . . to add a new understanding of my own inner landscape to all the understandings of myself I've accumulated through the decades. Add add add add add. . . .

Jesus told a short, "the kingdom-of-heaven-is-like . . ." parable.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." (Matt. 13:44)

It's one of my favorite parables on many levels. The field represents many things, including your life. If the field is your life, then treasure is within you. But the parable emphasizes that in order to apprehend the treasure, you much first sell what you have.

**Sell what you have in order to buy the treasure.
**Empty yourself of whatever fills your interior rooms in order to make room for the treasure.
**Spend whatever you currently have in order to receive this priceless treasure.
**Make any sacrifice necessary in order to claim the treasure.

And all this giving-up in order to receive does not happen in the context of a grinding, regretful sacrifice, as if spending and emptying were onerous tasks to undergo. The treasure is of such magnitude that the "selling" is undertaken with joy, what St. Clare of Assisi called a "laudable exchange." We exchange the small joy we have in our hands for the greater joy or the "pearl of great price" . . . the unimaginable joy -- because it cannot be imagined -- of this treasure.

There is an unmistakable "sell-buy" dynamic at work here. We cannot simply keep adding on, adding on, adding on, without at some point acknowledging that finding this treasure means there are things I have to release in order to apprehend it. I must let go of some things in my life-world in order to fully receive -- or "buy" -- some other things that bring life.

In other words, I cannot hold onto life as it is or life as I experience it now, and merely add-on components of the spiritual life if I want to become the person God created me to be. Spirituality is not an add-on extravaganza! In reality, it is more about subtraction than addition. Some things must be sold, released, emptied, and let go of, in order to make space within us for the treasure we seek.

Personal transformation is more like home renovation than an add-on extravaganza. Bit by bit, some walls are coming down, colors are changing, modes of access are becoming more spacious. There is some demolition involved, and very often the deconstruction is painful. But also, something new and beautiful is being built from the old bones of our lives.

In the life that is continually becoming, this process will take us to our final breath.

Thomas Merton: The Will of God as a Creative Act

The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new (or failing to do so), something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act, which must be retrieved in and by us – by the will of God.

This is my big aim – to put everything else aside. I do not want to create merely for and by myself a new life and a new world, but I want God to create them in and through me. This is central and fundamental. . . .

I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into being. But not by my plans and my agitation.


[Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, ed. by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo, (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) p. 125]

The "Who" and "What" of Wheat and Weeds: Part 2

Jesus then told them this story:

The kingdom of heaven is like what happened when a farmer scattered good seed in a field. But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and scattered weed seeds in the field and then left.

When the plants came up and began to ripen, the farmer’s servants could see the weeds. The servants came and asked, “Sir, didn’t you scatter good seed in your field? Where did these weeds come from?”

“An enemy did this,” he replied.

His servants then asked, “Do you want us to go out and pull up the weeds?”

"No!” he answered. “You might also pull up the wheat. Leave the weeds alone until harvest time. Then I’ll tell my workers to gather the weeds and tie them up and burn them. But I’ll have them store the wheat in my barn.”

(Matt. 13:24 - 30)


In the parable's landscape, if the field stands for my life or your life, then the wheat and weeds represent those qualities or characteristics which make up who we are, how we see ourselves, and what we do in the world. I'm calling these aspects of ourselves the "what" which lies within the field of my life or yours. We may judge some of those qualities as positive and helpful (wheat), while considering other characteristics to be negative, harmful, or unwanted (weeds).

The parable suggests we cannot presume to know what is wheat and what is weed within our interior field; therefore, Jesus encourages us to allow everything to grow in the field and leave the work of separating the two to God.

This "letting be" can be arduous work in itself. Our notion of what is right and what is wrong can be deeply ingrained within us, and to find something within the field of our lives that does not sync up with our vision of what it means to be "religious" or "spiritual" can prompt us to move heaven and earth to remove the "weeds." At the very least, finding weeds within the plot of our lives can lead to overwhelming guilt and shame.

"Let everything grow in your field," the parable teaches.

Who
There is another level at which the parable may be read, this one suggested by Jesus himself. It is social in nature. In this interpretation, the field is the world. The wheat and the weeds represent various people in the world -- the "who's" sown in the field -- some who do good and work for life . . . others who are more destructive and whose presence diminishes life. But people, scattered throughout the world, embody the images of wheat and weed.

[I would argue that no single person is completely "wheat" or completely "weed." Rather, each of us exist as some combination of wheat AND weeds, some confused mixture of the two . . . with most of us trying to maximize our wheat and trying to hide or minimize our weeds. . . . all a matter for another essay at some other time.]

Some people who are sown in the world look appealing. They appear to be doing good for others (perhaps advocating for a cause we find admirable or beneficial) or seem to be successful in their own right; however, in reality they cause fractures. They divide and separate. Appearances notwithstanding, they do not bring life and healing to the world. The parable acknowledges that we cannot presume to know, from the ways things appear, what impact this person has on the well-being of others and the planet.

On the other hand, there are some who appear to be weeds. They live on the fringes or they seem disreputable. We might think of their behavior or lifestyle as scandalous. We can see little in their lives which seems life-giving to us; yet, some of these people are wheat, according to the parable. They are subversively bringing life and wholeness to the world.

The parable admonishes us to allow everything in the field to grow without trying to rid the world of one thing or the other. I find this a remarkably difficult stance to take in current culture, given my own observation of what seems to be life-threatening and harmful. I want to judge, to presume to know who is good and who is bad, who to support and who to protest.

The ongoing, insidious temptation for religious people is the tendency to judge others. Those on an intentionally spiritual path are not exempt from this tendency to judge, and in fact may be more prone to judgment than others.

I find it easy enough to judge others according to the light I have at the moment. Further, I presume my way is THE Way, and then judge those who have chosen some other way. Of course, in such judgments, I am always the wheat and you -- if you don't agree with me -- are always the weed.

Don't be quick to judge others, the parable teaches. Don't be presumptuous enough to label either wheat or weeds in the world. Don't assume what you see is all there is. Any assemblage of people, whether the Church, the coffee group, or those gathered at the halfway house, is a strange and confusing combination of wheat and weeds. Every person in the field of the world is full of complexity and holds within themselves an awkward mixture of wheat and weeds.

Including me. And you.

The "Who" and "What" of Wheat and Weeds: Part 1

Jesus then told them this story:

The kingdom of heaven is like what happened when a farmer scattered good seed in a field. But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and scattered weed seeds in the field and then left.

When the plants came up and began to ripen, the farmer’s servants could see the weeds. The servants came and asked, “Sir, didn’t you scatter good seed in your field? Where did these weeds come from?”

“An enemy did this,” he replied.

His servants then asked, “Do you want us to go out and pull up the weeds?”

"No!” he answered. “You might also pull up the wheat. Leave the weeds alone until harvest time. Then I’ll tell my workers to gather the weeds and tie them up and burn them. But I’ll have them store the wheat in my barn.”

(Matt. 13:24 - 30)


For years I've heard this parable used as a text on discernment, that is, how to distinguish wheat from weeds, good from evil. With even a casual reading of the parable, however, you can see that interpretation runs counter to what the parable teaches. Rather than instruction on how to determine what is wheat and what is weed, the parable in essence says, "Don't bother with worry over what is weed and what is wheat. In many cases you won't be able to figure out one from the other. In pulling out what you think is bad, you may in fact be rooting out something life-giving. And in cultivating what is good, you may be encouraging something detrimental to wholeness. Let it be for now, and trust God to do the weeding out when the time is right."

Thus, the parable serves as a cautionary word against judgment and presuming to know how to sort out the good from the bad. After all, our notion of wheat and weed is most often personally or tribally referenced, so that our investment in what is good or bad shapes how we see. Something I see as completely wheat is seen by another person -- perhaps from a different political party, a different nationality, a different race, a different sexual orientation, a different worldview -- as weed. Only in our arrogance do we stand in our own center and claim our own view to be absolute Truth. Yet, such arrogance lives within each of us. It is the arrogance of our own presumed "knowing" that Jesus cautions against in the parable.

Let me offer you a couple of levels, beyond the background above, on which to consider the parable. I'll write about the "what" today, and then shift the field a bit to reflect on "who" in the next essay.

What
Consider the parable as a story about your own inner world. In the parable's language, your life is the field. And in the field of your life, the Farmer has scattered good seed, wheat-seed. There is treasure within you, and the capacity to do good in the world. You have gifts woven into your unique DNA, that when shared with the world bring life and light and healing. Inside you is the image of God, the God-seed if you will, that is full of life and waits to germinate, blossom, and produce fruit. Within you there is wheat.

But according to the parable, there is also weed scattered within you and me. We are each neither fully wheat nor fully weed. The field is not "either-or," but "both-and," both wheat AND weeds.

Each of us acts daily out of self-interest, an ego-centrism that is hard to weed out. Or perhaps we carry within our body some condition that limits our capacity to do what we'd like to do, and we think of that limitation as a weed.

The "what" of the parable -- at least as I'm presenting it -- are those qualities, traits, and characteristics within me or you which we want to characterize as wheat or weed. In fact, the "what" may include all the interior material that makes up my life, what it means for me to be me and you to be you.

And the teaching of the parable simply says, "None of us can accurately see what is wheat and what is weed in our own life. We may find some personal trait unpleasant . . . or we may struggle with some condition that feels debilitating . . . or we may think of some very good qualities about ourselves. . . . But we are not God, who alone sees all the way through us."

The parable cautions us against pulling too many of our interior weeds, those things -- I'm calling them "whats" -- that make up our interior world. I have learned this lesson the hard way. Once I became intentional about my connection with God years ago, I immediately wanted to get rid of the bad habits, debilitating conditions, and unpleasant feelings I felt hindered my connection to God. My language was, "I'm going to obliterate them!" as if I knew what was best for my life. Now, decades later, I am still learning that some of the experiences which seem most unpleasant to me, difficult and even paralyzing, are the ones shaping me most, deepening my connection with my own self, God, others, and the world.

I don't always resist judgment, just as I can't stop presuming to know what is best -- I'm finding this open stance to be especially difficult in the contentiousness of contemporary life, in which I want to presume to know what is wheat and what is weed -- but I am a work in progress. I recognize my limited ability to see what is true and what is false, what is wheat and what is weed, at least this morning as I write this piece.


Practical Helps

**In your prayer, ask God for the grace to give you a spirit of generosity, especially with yourself. "God, I'm asking for the grace to be generous with myself." This is a very Ignatian form of prayer which acknowledges that we do not generate this generosity (or whatever you are asking for) on our own. Rather, we receive it as a gift, as grace.

**Pray the Freedom Prayer:
"God, free me from the need to control what my life looks like."
"God, free me from my need to be perfect."
"God, free me from my impulse to judge myself."
"God, free me from my need to control my relationship with you."

**Regularly practice some form of Christian contemplative prayer, perhaps Centering Prayer or Christian Meditation. These more interior forms of prayer each have at their heart a continual letting go of thoughts, images, and mental commentaries. Practicing the prayer regularly, you will find that the "letting go" which takes place during the prayer time may be extended to ordinary life. Then, the compulsion to judge yourself or to presume that you know what is best for your life can be released in everyday life just as it is in the time of prayer.


I'll share some reflections on the "who" of wheat and weeds in the next post.